


Four Birthdays Snuffy Bradberry Remembered And One He Forgot

by Thia (Jennaria)



Category: Toy Soldiers (1991)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-14
Updated: 2010-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-09 19:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/90549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennaria/pseuds/Thia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your birthday is supposed to be happy.  Sometimes.  Maybe.  Worth trying, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Birthdays Snuffy Bradberry Remembered And One He Forgot

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my birthday mathom challenge, first of three, for Irisbleufic's request of "a TS birthday celebration drabble, any of the guys' birthdays but Billy's or Joey's."

Jonathan Bradberry's birthday is in October, which is after school starts but still early enough that they can do cool things. At Jonathan's sixth birthday party, he had an old-fashioned ice cream maker. Everyone got a turn at the metal crank-handle, then they all went off to play other games. The ice cream later was delicious, even better because they'd made it _themselves_.

Two weeks later, he asked his mother if he could do it again.

"Not until your father's figured out how to make it work," she said absently.

"But...at my birthday, it worked!"

"We let you _think_ it worked. It didn't cool properly, so I had to run out and get ice cream from the store. I believe there's still some left in the freezer if you want some."

He _was_ six. Ice cream tastes good even if you're kind of sulking as you eat it.

*

For his eleventh birthday party, they played Frisbee or rather everyone else played Frisbee and Jonathan watched. The doctor said he had asthma, which is why he got out of breath so easily, and not just the ordinary kind of out of breath but the kind where it felt like he _couldn't_ breathe. It was still stupid.

One of the guys -- not one Jonathan knew well, just one of the new kids in his class -- stopped by where Jonathan was sitting. "Hey, wanna play?"

"Sure!" Jonathan said, scrambling to his feet.

His mother grabbed his arm before he got two steps. "Jonathan!"

"But, mom, it's my birthday!"

"And I'd rather not spend it at the hospital. No running."

Jonathan looked at the new guy. The new guy just shrugged and ran back off to try to catch the Frisbee, while Jonathan was left to slump back down to the ground.

Stupid rules. Stupid breathing. Stupid birthdays.

*

His seventeenth birthday...well.

Two weeks later, while they were talking about something else entirely, Hank suddenly said, "Oh, shit."

"What?" Snuffy jumped and looked over his shoulder uneasily.

Hank snorted a laugh. "Nobody's coming. Just realized we all forgot your birthday."

"Oh. Right." They'd had plans. They were going to go downstairs to that old basement, and smuggle in cake, and drink like 'mouthwash' actually tasted good.

He just...forgot.

 

*

His twenty-first birthday Snuffy remembered only on a technicality. His head cleared a bit as his roommate dumped him into bed. "What time is it?" It came out closer to "Wha' tizit," all slurred together.

"Eleven thirty," Jake said shortly, though maybe that was from lugging Snuffy up the stairs. "Happy birthday. Now go to _sleep_."

Snuffy didn't. He was still pretty drunk, his head all spinny, but he hadn't gotten fucked tonight after all because he wasn't sore, not the way he'd _hoped_. So he was one for two.

Actually, one for three. No matter how much he'd had to drink, he still felt like there was this looming _thing_ at the back of his head. Fucking stupid -- it was his _birthday_, not the anniversary or anything. It had been four years, for fuck's sake.

Snuffy grimaced into his pillow, then shut his eyes. What the hell. He was drunk enough to sleep, anyway. He'd try the whole forgetting thing again tomorrow.

*

Snuffy prepared early for his twenty-eighth birthday. Actually, his therapist said he shouldn't wait at all, but Snuffy liked the symmetry of using his birthday, so he wrote the letters early and _sent_ them on his birthday -- actual physical letters, handwritten on paper, not emails. Emails felt too, what was the word...too _transient_. Too easy to ignore or delete.

Rick's letter was long and chatty: family shit, actually getting a part in an off-off-off-off Broadway show, using a new inhaler (and trying to persuade his roommate to give up smoking, haha), the new ice cream maker he bought and his total failure to make ice cream. Hank's was shorter, mostly because he saw Hank more often, and Phil's was shorter because he didn't know Phil as well.

He didn't know Billy's address, so he had to dig up the last address he'd had for him, and hope it would be forwarded. The letter really only contained two words: _I'm sorry._

He thought about sending the final letter to a graveyard in New Jersey, or bringing it himself. But that was kind of melodramatic, even for him. Instead, he lit a candle, and burned the letter, still in its envelope, like a wish being sent on ahead. The words were the same as in Billy's letter: _I'm sorry._ Sorry for having been an asshole, sorry he hadn't been braver, sorry he'd broken the wrong rules instead of the right ones. The dead understood those kind of things, didn't they?

When the letter was ash, Snuffy got up and went to his fridge. It was his birthday, after all. He wanted cake, and ice cream (even if he had to buy it), and maybe some alcohol better than 'mouthwash.'

-end-


End file.
